


Never Let Them Take The Light Behind Your Eyes

by Reshma



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Afghanistan, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcoholic Tony Stark, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Homeless Tony Stark, Homelessness, Hurt Tony Stark, I hope, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution, Please Kill Me, Prostitution, Suicidal Thoughts, author is procrastinating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 21:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reshma/pseuds/Reshma
Summary: Tony Stark is consumed by darkness.(It's not graphic, I just am bad at tagging.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> what even is this

Tony Stark is consumed by darkness. But he doesn’t let himself give into it.

It’s been so long since he was kicked out of the Avengers, he’s lost count of the days.

He wanders the streets, far from crowds and civilization. Far from the person he used to be.

The tabloids don’t care about him anymore, really. They’re all just vultures and will scavenge up whatever they can so all that’s left are maggots and bones.

That’s how he feels most days.

The public claima he’s a prostitute in East Harlem, selling himself so much that he’s worthless. The name Stark doesn’t mean anything but degradation. In the stark, people would throw their paper cups and beer cans at him and make remarks about how Stark men are useless. Perhaps that’s how the legacy of the name was always supposed to end, Tony supposes. Perhaps he was never meant to be more than face of destruction and warmongering.

Serves him right, to think that he could save the world and make it anymore than the place that broke him in a cave in Afghanistan.

He never does quite have the guts to sleep with strangers for money. A time ago, he was a carefree playboy, nonchalant and worth something. Now he can’t look in the reflection of a window without crying. He wouldn’t want to taint anyone else with the legacy of a Stark.

He stays around the same group hookers and nomads, safe and more hospital than alone. 

When he originally left so long ago, OsCorp offered him a job. He scoffed at it, once upon a time, thinking it was a middle finger to all the work he had ever accomplished at Stark Industries. To join OsCorp would’ve gone against every moral in the company and everything Iron Man and Tony Stark stood for.

Now, that feels like an excuse.

In a way, he’s glad that he’s hollow and a shell of a man. It’s so much easier than trying; trying to ever recover from being exiled from the Avengers or getting up everyday knowing he lost Pepper and Rhodey.

It’s Ms. Potts and Colonel Rhodes, now. He feels like a fraud still using their first names. He’s no one to any of them, just another body travelling the streets of New York, vacant eyes and empty soul.

The spotlight still shines on the world’s mightiest heroes; Black Widow and Banner’s rumours of a wedding on TV screens in convenience stores when he can afford them, Hawkeye and his picket-fence family doing charity work in some third-world nation on the New York Times and Thor making occasional appearances at the UN while ruling Asgard.

And the soldier; Captain America, sentinel of liberty and all that. He’s still America’s golden boy, never a wrongdoer or vandal, perfect and shiny. The least public of them all after Tony left, seen defending the world in life-or-death battles and the odd press conference. Rumors of his fiancee or something swirl and haunt Tony’s mind anytime he sees a child in a crowd wearing a Captain America shirt.

Tony misses him the most. They once were civil, friends even and so close to something more. A mechanic and a war hero, taking on the world to make it safer and better. To be something more. There was a reluctant respect for each other first, after New York, but it blossomed into something beautiful. Their relationship became a place, a home and haven. It wasn’t even the Tower, the family of superheroes or his workshop; it was just the two of them, marveling in what could be. Inventions for the greater good of third-world societies and revolutions for the freedom of the first-world. It wasn’t the concept of divide and conquer; it was the underlying motivation of unity.

Two men fighting for humanity to thrive. He and Steve could once do and be anything; Tony believed he could once fix anything that came up to bat.

It devastates him with agony in his core to think what Steve Rogers would say about Tony now.

The Avengers have demonized people him and isolated themselves as far away from Iron Man. Stark Industries is most likely soon to be Potts Industries and the armed forces have no doubt destroyed any evidence of his name on any remaining weapons. All his suits have been probably been destroyed and J.A.R.V.I.S. most likely belongs to the C.I.A. or some god forsaken, corrupted government agency. His name presumably has been torn from history books headlines. They don’t want a monster and mental breakdown of a man in power.

Everything was ripped out from underneath his feet. And all because Tony Stark killed an innocent man.

The world idolizes them for their sacrifice and bravery, humanity’s salvation of heros, shiny and pristine. Gods on earth, as if every move they make is sacred; as if every battle they win is Noah’s Ark; as if, aside from Thor, they aren’t all but merely human at the core.

As if they don’t all have red in their ledger.

He still has cheap whiskey and a precious few packs of Marlboro’s to his name. He amblers uselessly throughout the day, begging in his usual locations where other beggars and homeless don’t dare squabble for territory. It’s the slums and unsafe, but it’s home.

Tony has aged more in the past few years than his entire stay with the Avengers. His hair is gray and frail, his body is weak and gaunt from too little meals and his arc reactor is long debased to a barely functioning generator. Tony uses most of his money that’s not for cigarettes or alcohol for cheap batteries once or twice a month. He barely showers and occasionally is lucky to find worn shirts rummaging through dumpsters in dusty alleys in the Bronx.

Some days he wishes he were dead and debates throwing himself from the Brooklyn Bridge. No one would care, really, no next of kin or loved ones to walk his casket from the church. The world would be happier to see a murderer gone. Especially, the Avengers.

Despite it all he doesn’t steal, although some days he knows it would be easier. This life is brutal and bleak; there is no future or guarantee of tomorrow, be it from the muggings or gun violence of the poorest neighborhoods. But he stills has some assemblance of morals.

It’s not for dignity and it certainly isn’t for honor. But he won’t stoop to the level of petty theft or shoplifting. He’s seen his fair share of vagrants who get arrested or killed in these parts for something he once considered so trivial.

The answer to everything is usually at the bottom of a bottle of cardboard matchbox. He’s been offered help, in the beginning, by a few travelers that recognized him or the harlots that know him best. They offer him a new start through connections, a place to eat and sleep or even if he gets clean.

But Tony knows better. Dead or alive, he’s better off withering away in a drunk stupor than even attempting any form of redemption. He could never recover or be freed from sin. He could never truly seek absolution without the reminder of his deterioration.

Some of the ladies of the night he stays with scrutinize his lifestyle, no interest in getting off the streets and no real purpose in life. They see him depressed or so off his face that they sigh out of pity and take him in.

How ironic; for a man once so privileged and full of potential to be pitied by prostitutes.

Above all, what gnaws at him in the night isn’t the stab wounds or biting chill of winter; it’s not the mental image of a team that was once happy or

It’s the deafening loneliness.

Above all, loneliness the worst thing that he can live through.  
\------------

It’s one of those nights that his head is filled with images of Steve. Flashes of the two of them in bed together or even on the battlefield, soaking in each other’s divine company.

Tony stumbles out of a dead-end bar without direction, a small metal flask of gin and tonic flailing in one hand and the other attempting to stabilize himself on a Victorian era brick wall. He’s blocks away from the hustle and bustle of Highland Park in Brooklyn. He can’t remember what time or day it is but he knows he’s been gambling with his chances. He’s in a more crowded area and he ought to know better than lingering in other’s territory by now.  
He knows that it’s only a matter of time before his ladies of the night kick him to the curb, having reached their boiling point for the last time. He knows that the sand in the hourglass is running out and he will die soon. Old habits die hard, though, and he doesn’t plan on giving up his booze anytime soon.

It doesn’t matter; he doesn’t matter.

The flask is covered in red, white and blue, a faded star gleaming in the moonlight as if a mockery for the man staring at it. The Captain America shield shines bright although it shouldn’t after so much use.

Tony has barely taken a swig from the mouth of it when he’s yanked to the sidealley on the ground.

Gravel is seeping into his bruised, sallow skin and three figures loom over him, cackling, when they begin to kick him into the dirt. The world is spinning and black orbs are clouding his vision.

He’s got no money or and he’s too far from his family of outcasts. He can vaguely make out the features of the transients, local boys no older than thirty who actively terrorize the homeless population.

“Come on, playboy,” Johnny croons. He’s the leader, Tony recalls, and is always trying to seduce him. He was one of the first to offer Tony help to get off the streets, an old fan of Iron Man turned delinquent when he didn’t accept his advances. “You don’t want my money? I’m sure I’m better than the other blokes you whore around with.” There’s a strong Jersey-like accent thick in his tone, angry and arrogant. Long gone is a boy who worships an idol, now lies a pretentious asshole who expects Tony to beg.

Johnny is evil and manipulative. He hurts people who are the most vulnerable to serve his own agenda and is a sadist.

Tony manages to stagger onto his feet and brace himself against one of the walls, narrowly landing face-first into the cold, hard cement, when he slurs out a comeback.

“Johnny,” His tone is soft and almost welcoming as he blinks through his grimy eyelashes. Johnny’s face twists in surprise and grins a toothy smirk.

But even an intoxicated Tony won’t stoop so low. He may be nothing and a nobody; he may be broke and homeless; he may be non-committedly suicidal and chaotically hopeless; he may be fucking alone for Christ’s sake.

He may be all those things but he’s still a goddamn fighter. He knows beneath all the liquor and nicotine and underneath the busted up blue hue of a dying arc reactor only one thing.

He’s nothing like Johnny. He’s more a man than the boy will ever be.

Tony crows, “I thought you’d never ask.” He spits in Jonny’s eye and pulls back to land a punch square in his jaw when he’s thrown to the ground a few feet away by one of the other buggers.

The pain in his stomach is overwhelming and he can feel his battery life dying in his chest. His lungs are full of smoke and he can barely see straight.

‘This is it.’ He realizes. Out like a light, a hero turned villain will die in the middle of the biggest city in the United States where no one will care.

The boys are closing in on his crumpled form and he’s accepted his fate when the profile of a man behind the boys emerges.

“If you ain’t paying for the tramp, beat it, you sons of bitches. Get the fuck outta here!” An assertive voice barks from the edges of the shadows. The figure is tall and broad, a silhouette radiating power and pent up energy.

Johnny sneers and scoffs, about to threaten the faceless man. Suddenly, the other two merry thieves face him and turn a ghostly white with terror in Tony’s peripheral vision and bolt out of the alley. Johnny is halfway turned around in confusion when he’s pulled away away from Stark’s deathbed and the booming sound of a punch crackles into his ears.

Minutes pass, and sounds of wheezing and bones breaking erupt from the entrance of the alley. His vision is getting worse and he’s still greeting death faintly when the masculine voice thunders out menacingly, “I won’t tell you again, son. Go near him again and your neck won’t be the only thing broken.” A gasp for air and scuffled footsteps quicken out of his sight. Johnny is gone.

Tony’s view is blurry and he barely tilts his head upwards to the figure when his stomach sinks and shock overtakes him.

There must've been something in his drink, LSD or cocaine, that has to be it. Maybe he hit his head too hard or drank too extremely. Maybe his physical condition is coming to bite him in the ass or some cancer is whittling him into shreds because he can’t be seeing what is in front of him right now. 

Because what he sees Steve Rogers in crouched down in front of him, concern and fury creasing his expression.

“Tony,” Steve’s voice is unnervingly composed and he looks disgusted. Who wouldn’t be? Who would ever want him? His tone changes within a heartbeat and sounds rushed, “Thank god. I’ve been searching for months. We need to get you to a hospital.” Steve is still ever the saviour and Tony can’t help but feel a hot cynicism start to boil. He looks as good as he remembers; better even. Clean shaven, toned body and perfect. His uniform is worn but not raggedy and his hands are hovering inches from his frame, calloused and bloody. His shield lays a few feet away, brightly glimmering in the wide expanse of night.

“So, what? You can parade what a monster I am again? So, I can pretend I have a family and then kill me? Sorry, Winghead, but I’ll pass.” Tony is livid and his words are garbled. It won't matter. He doesn’t have long now before Steve finishes him off.

Steve face furrows in frustration and states as a matter-of-fact. “You’re a drunk and a loon. Good to know the streets have been treating you well. Really, you’re charming as ever, Stark.” He laughs humorlessly and rolls his eyes. “Let me get Widow or Barton and get you back to the tower.” There’s a light fondness in his tone and a familiarity that screams home and it’s too much.

Tony knows Rogers going to slam his shield into his chest any second now. But he can’t take the humiliation and this drawn out world like this anymore. He wants to get as far away from his lover turned enemy as possible and never look back.

Steve touches his earpiece and then reaches out to hoist him up. With the last of his energy and whatever remains of his pride, Tony scrambles away wildly into the gravel, scared and frantic.

“Don’ touch me!” He wails and raises his arms to cover his arc reactor. “Please don’t kill me.” It’s pathetic, to want to die but not have the guts. To truly succumb to loneliness and solitude.

Shock washes over Steve as he rears back like he’s been slapped and shakes his head as his eyes widen in alarm, “Tony! I would nev-”

He’s cut off as Tony begins rocking back and forth feeble, sobbing into his gory stab wound on his thigh.

He whispers out in what he thinks will be his last words, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I thought about killing myself and then pondered turning myself in, but I couldn’t with the shame and you and-.”

Steve’s hands grasp Tony’s cheeks as he flails and tries to hit his head roughly into the brick wall over and over again. Steve yanks Tony up and says, “You can’t keep hurting yourself like this. I won’t let you go ever again. Even if I’m not enough to keep you mine, I’ll never let you turn out like this again.”

Tony doesn’t realize it but he manages out the words, “You’re perfect, Steve.” in a jumbled mess.

To his horror, Steve begins to cry and break down in rage. It’s like a dam bursting open and the rest of the earth flooding. It feels sudden to the world, but the dam has been held back for so long. “How could you? How could you leave me and sell yourself to other people? Why them? Why not me?! I gave you everything and I love you, god dammit but it’s never enough!”

If he dies here and now, hallucination or not, Tony knows he will be happy,

“S’eev’ Tony mumbles out before, once again, darkness consumes him.

\-------------

When Tony Stark opens his eyes, he doesn’t remember anything except the expectation of waking up in hell.

The last thing he expects is a room of white, sterile-smelling Lysol and a lack of pain. Moreso, he does not expect Steve Rogers to be sitting in a plastic white chair, hunched near Tony or I.V. tubes plunged into every available vein.

His arc reactor is missing and his momentary panic ceases instantly; his chest is suited with a fresh, glowing energy source, something like vibranium or adamantium encasing the hole where his heart should be. His body is clean for the first time in years and several bruises underneath a hospital gown have faded.

There are balloons with cartoons of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Hulk and ‘get well soon’ cards sitting on the far end of the bed.

He stares at the ceiling as he hears voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. emanate something like relief and admiration in a greeting, “Welcome home, Sir.”

And so he breathes in and out through his nose, turns towards Steve figure and smiles.

He may be hopeless but he isn’t alone.

Not anymore.

And so, in that moment, Tony Stark knows he will never give into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

I'm reposting this because everything was corrupted this morning );

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a My Chem song  
> I am not supposed to be here. I am supposed to be finishing my Irondad Christmas special but, oh look, I’m back on my bullshit.  
> Someone slap me and force me to finish that.  
> I wrote this is in like two hours.  
> It was originally supposed to end with Cap being an asshole and abandoning Tony with Johnny and co. but I'm a coward.


End file.
